by Yigal Bronner

Dissident Voice
January 16, 2003

Help Free Yoni
Ben Artzi who has been tried for the seventh time in 196 days.

Jonathan Ben
Artzi's (or Yoni as his friends know him) first experience with the Israeli
justice system was a positive one. As a student at an elite Jerusalem prep
school, he found that he could no longer bear the militaristic atmosphere or
the overt role the military played in his education. When his class was bussed
to a military training center for an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) orientation as
part of his school program, Yoni refused to go. He also insisted that his
parents be refunded for this "course," and that the fees be returned
to his sole Arab classmate, who was literally taken off the military bus. Yoni
simply felt that a school should prepare its students to be better citizens--
not soldiers. But this position, which for many may seem rather commonsensical,
is considered extremely radical in Israel. The high school, for its part,
retaliated by preventing Yoni from graduating and denying him his diploma. It
took a year and half of an uphill legal battle for this decision to be
overruled by an Israeli court.

In a tiny and
cramped courtroom, Yoni, by then a college freshman majoring in mathematics,
finally had a graduation-ceremony of sorts. But this small victory is now a
fading memory for Yoni, who has spent the last six months in a military prison.
Yoni is a pacifist and has been one ever since he was twelve. He simply opposes
wars. He cannot picture himself bearing arms. Furthermore, he is incensed by
Israel's ongoing occupation of Palestine, by the atrocities and war crimes it
commits, and by the endless cycle of violence its leaders market as a necessary
component of life in Israel. Long before he was due to be drafted, it was clear
to Yoni that he could not and would not participate in this march of folly; he
would not join the military. Yoni was one of the organizers of a seniors'
letter addressed to Prime Minister Sharon and signed by some three hundred high
school graduates, which announced their refusal to be drafted. The group's
entire leadership is now behind bars.

One might have
expected the state of Israel to respect the decisions of conscientious
objectors like Yoni and his friends. After all, Israel has signed several
international treaties which oblige it to wave military service for those who
-- due reasons of conscience or religious belief -- feel incapable of taking up
arms. These covenants require the state to assign civil rather than military
service to such people. But the Israeli government, and more precisely the
military prosecutor Menachem Finkelstein, has decided to ignore their
obligations towards international law.

Instead the
state has incarcerated the conscientious objectors in military prisons, for an
indefinite period of time. Opposing the draft is simply too subversive a
position in Israel-- too threatening to a militaristic establishment which has
lived off the occupation and the ongoing war for so long. Before throwing Yoni
and his friends in jail, however, the Israeli government had to address its
obligation to the above-mentioned international treaties, and so in a cynical
effort to appear law abiding, it created a committee of
"conscience-experts" whose role was to examine the motivations of the
seniors. This committee has found that not one of the graduates is a real
conscientious objector. They are all pretenders, it claims, and as such their
place is in jail.

It would seem
that the motivations of someone like Yoni, who risked his school diploma for
his pacifist beliefs, should be beyond suspicion. After all, the decision to sue
his own school was not without ramifications. Yoni had to pay a high social
price for standing up for his unpopular beliefs. Moreover, anyone who reads his
school essays will find that ever since eighth grade, he has had a very clear
pacifist worldview. These essays were handed over to the military's
"conscientious experts" who examined the evidence, and yet they found
that Yoni was not really guided by his conscience. Yoni, the experts concluded,
was simply a troublemaker, which, according to some twisted logic, also made
him a perfectly suitable candidate for military service.

Accordingly,
Israel and military prosecutor Finkelstein are not really violating their
commitment to exempt conscientious objectors from military service-- there just
aren't any objectors in their midst. As for trouble-making seniors, these exist
in large quantities and have to be disciplined. There is no international law
against this. What, then, is the suitable punishment for the crime committed by
Yoni and his friends, those trouble makers who masqueraded as people of
conscience?

The answer to
this question is simple: whatever it takes to break them.

Yoni has so far
been sentenced to seven consecutive prison-terms, amounting to 196 days, and
there does not seem to be an end in sight. He has been told time and again that
he would be released at once, if he were to give up his principals. He would
then be exempted from army service for mental reasons, they insinuated. The
process would be simple: there would not be a team of experts this time. If he
would only agree to see a psychiatrist, they would declare him mentally unfit
instantly

But Yoni is
still strong, and insists that his conscientious position is not some kind of
mental illness. Yoni's parents, Ofra and Matania, are also strong, although
they are growing increasingly bitter with the state in which they chose to
raise their children. People of conscience, in Israel and abroad, must take a
stand in Yoni's case. We need to raise our voice in his support. We should demand
that this young man be released immediately and be reunited with his parents.
It does not take a pacifist or even a political like-minded person to realize
that he's done more than enough to earn his second diploma and become a
graduate of the prison academy.

Yigal Bronner teaches South Asian literature at the Tel Aviv University
and has recently spent four weeks in military prison for refusing to serve as a
reservist in the occupied territories. He can be reached at ybronner@post.tau.ac.il

How
to help Yoni and the other Israeli conscientious objectors?

1. Donate money for the Free the
Conscientious Objectors Campaign. To support the campaign on behalf of Yoni and
his friends please send a check ($15, $25, $50.... $1,000) made out to Assaf
Oron, To:

Free the Conscientious Objectors Campaign
C/O Assaf Oron

P.O. Box 95511

Seattle, WA

98145-5511

USA

2. Send faxes and protest the treatment
of Yoni:

Please write to:

Brigade General Menachem Finklestein

Chief Military Prosecutor

Military postal code 9605

IDF

Israel

Fax: ++972-3-569-43-70

Here is asample letter: (it's always better co compose one's own)

Dear Brigade General Finklestein,

During the last months officers under you
charge have sentenced young conscientious objectors to repeated prison terms in
clear violation of international law. I hereby ask you to abide by the
international covenants upon which Israel is a signatory (e.g., International
Covenant of Political and Civil Rights) and to immediately release these young
men from prison. There is no justification for your insistence to keep Yoni Ben
Artzi and the other determined young men behind prison bars.